The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

THE Special Olympics Bahamas will be showcasing at least 18 of their athletes in their annual Bowling Nationals over the next few days.

The week-long tournament is scheduled to begin next week at Mario’s Bowling and Family Entertainment Palace.

Gilbert Williams, national director of Special Olympics Bahamas, said their competitors are always excited about the activities that they put on for them.

“Bowling has been one of our favourite programmes for the athletes for the last couple of years,” Williams said. “They’ve come a long way from where it started and its just been fantastic.”

Whitney Sands, the Special Olympics national bowling coach, said some of the bowlers are bowling at the level of the night league bowlers, which speaks volumes for their programme.

“Some of them can compete in the night league, if given the opportunity,” he said.

“But the developmental players are on the edge of becoming much better bowlers and we’re working with them to get them to the stage that they need to be at.

“They are all good bowlers. We went to the World Games in 2015 and we came back with several gold medals.

“One athlete in particular, Deangelo Bullard, did extremely well. He was the talk of the town in LA (Los Angeles). Right now, we feel we are in a good position and with the continued support from Mario’s Bowling, we’re seeing some real progress.”

The bowlers will be participating in a unified division where persons without an intellectual disability will partner with those who have an intellectual disability.

There will also be a division for just athletes participating.

“They are all excited,” Williams said. “Normally mid-April is really our competition month. We start our season in January.

“We just had our soccer tournament, the bocce national championships in Tarpum Bay, Eleuthera and bowling is next on the agenda, so everybody is excited about that.”

Following bowling, Williams said they would close out the month with their track and field championships in the original Thomas A Robinson Track and Field Stadium on May 27.